Which language to learn?

College Majors
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<p>Which language to learn?
I am a nursing major in college and im only doing this for my own personal satisfaction and hopefully it will help me somewhere later in life. Im stuck in choosing a language to pursue. Here are my options, and why</p>

<p>Spanish - most practical, not really interested
French - would be cool to learn, sounds intruiging
Italian - probably my first choice to choose, more intruiging than french
Japanese - very interesting to learn, but heard it was hard, I dont know if I would be able to fit it into my schedule
Chinese - most useful especially if I go into business other than that, not really interested and I also heard it was hard (which I probably wot but perhaps nursing administration?)</p>

<p>Which would be the best choice? Take into consideration if I can fit it into my schedule and would be able to handle it based on its learning curve. I dont know any other languages other than english</p>

<p>ALSO: How many semesters of the language does it take to earn a certification? Or be fluent in it?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

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<p>Spanish</p>

<p>here’s why:
-millions of Spanish speakers
-since the next most common language is Spanish it will make you much more desirable in nursing
-very easy since its similar to English</p>

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<p>Spanish because it’s more useful than Italian and French in the US, and you would never learn any Japanese/Chinese if you just plan on fulfilling a language requirement or something. Those require hard study and most likely study abroad.</p>

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<p>If you want to learn another language mostly for your own personal satisfaction, why are you asking us for advice? We don’t know what makes you happy.</p>

<p>If you are going for personal satisfaction, my honest advice would be to try a few language classes and stick to the one you like best. Whether or not you like the professor will have a much bigger impact on your interest in the class than the specifics of the language you are learning. </p>

<p>If you are hoping for the language to be useful career-wise, I second FutureMarine94 with some reservations. If you are living in a region with a big immigrant population, Spanish could be very useful indeed. If you are living in New Hampshire, probably not so much. </p>

<p>

Classes won’t get you to fluency. If you are interested in European languages, living abroad for about a year will get you to a point where you are comfortable with the sort of language you encounter on a regular basis. Near-native fluency will take much longer to acquire. (I have been living in the US for 5 years now and I still struggle to express myself in new situations. For example, I would have a hard time discussing cars or politics right now because I don’t have the vocab to do so.)</p>

<p>And a certification at what level?</p>

<p>

Japanese is said to be a lot easier than Chinese in grammar, pronunciation and writing system. And unless you actually want to live in China, I would not recommend that you learn Chinese for business purposes. Odds are that the English of your business partners is a lot better than your Chinese will ever be.</p>

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<p>According to the Foreign Service Institute’s ratings of language learning difficulty, Arabic, Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean are the most challenging languages for English speakers to learn. Among this group, Japanese is singled out as being more difficult than the others in the category.</p>

<p>[Language</a> Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning](<a href=“http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty]Language”>Language Difficulty Ranking - Effective Language Learning)</p>

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<p>Spanish would be excellent for nursing.</p>

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<p>Choose a language you’re interested in, you can’t force yourself to learn a language if your heart isn’t in it. And Chinese is not the most useful; it’s the least useful on your list! Read this article: [Learning</a> Mandarin: False Eastern promise | The Economist](<a href=“False Eastern promise”>False Eastern promise)</p>

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<p>Don’t learn Spanish if you have no interest in it, motivation is the single most important part of learning a language. However, if you plan on working in areas with a lot of Spanish influence, it would be an advantage. Don’t study Chinese or Japanese unless you are committed, it will definitely take many years to become fluent. Take Italian if you are interested, the words are very similar to Spanish, and the grammar is like French, so knowing it will help you with both of those languages. The time it will take to become fluent entirely depends on the effort you put into it. Thinking in the language as much as possible speeds this process up considerably, but takes practice.</p>

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<p>Go for Italian. You’ll be able to understand a lot of Spanish if you know Italian, and you’ll actually have motivation to study because you want to take it.</p>

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<p>I want to learn Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. </p>

<p>Spanish, Italian, and French are some of the other languages I want to learn as well. </p>

<p>If you are love learning languages, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try learning all of them.</p>

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<p>I am a fluent speaker of Spanish and I am passably good in Catalan and Arabic. I can hold a conversation (and have) in French and Italian due to the similarities between each of the languages I already know. I’m in the process of trying to decide whether to focus on French or Italian and I’ll share my thoughts on my own situation, so you can then see if it applies to you in a useful way.</p>

<p>I figure that since there is a large portion of English words which came from French, as well as some other similar words between Catal</p>

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